[ctl]

Uh... which of Uber's actions here are unethical?

Aggressively poaching drivers from Lyft seems all right to me. That's just healthy competition.

And this stuff about wasting Lyft's money by booking and canceling rides -- it's a bunch of nonsense. By Lyft's own estimate, Uber employees booked and canceled 5000 rides since last October. That's like $100k/yr in lost revenue. It's nothing. Certainly not a systematic attempt to undermine Lyft.

Am I missing something here?

Disclaimer: of the two services I only use Lyft. I've had bad experiences with Uber's customer service.

[kookiekrak]

When they hit the same driver twice, they're supposed to cancel the trip aren't they?

But when a trip is canceled it hurts the driver who uses gas to drive in their direction and causes them to miss out on other available rides, reduces the amount of available cars on the street for legitimate users, and more negative effects im sure you can imagine.

This still sounds ethical to you?

[ctl]

No, booking a ride with the intention to cancel is definitely wrong. My point is that Uber employees aren't doing that frequently enough to affect Lyft at all, so this can't be a plan on Uber's part.

It sounds like some Uber employees are just being assholes for no reason. That's unfortunate, but it's no reason to malign Uber itself. Every company has some assholes.

[dnautics]

I also agree that unethical is strong. It's really a grey area; it's borderline fraudulent ("not really intending to get a ride") but by that standard so is "butt-requesting".

It is a very jerk thing to do, and I think consumers should express their displeasure with those tactics through the power of the market.